Who wants ....

... a lightly used Ford Escort? Offers starting at 18p

Seriously though, James May might have once said the hammer was the tool of the pikey, but they aren't half good at coaxing a dying starter motor into getting off it's arse and doing some work.

'All it takes is getting three bolts off, switching the wires from the old motor to the new and then doing the bolts up again,' Said the bloke who sole me a new starter motor.

True, but Ford, in their wisdom decided to put one of the effing oil pipes in the way of said motor and I know if I tamper with that and balls that up I'll be depriving the engine of oil. Result: One expensive wheeled bomb.

Cue yet another visit to the garage to get that replaced just days after getting some new brake pads and a clutch quadrant fitted to the blasted machine. I'm really beginning to wonder if I was a bit rash last year when I junked the 20 year old car we did have because the clutch was completely shot and would cost three times what the old banger was worth to replace it.

To say this constant shuffling to and fro the garage to get things fixed on this car has left me as flat as my poor, monetarily raped walled.

Mind, even forking out all this money on spares and repairs pales into comparison with the thoroughly unpleasant experience of getting the car filled up with diesel. £1.23 a litre now to full the fucker up now, which works out as 60 quid these days because the government old and new are quite happy to repeatedly rape us motorists with all sorts of taxes and then NOT use that money to repair the dog chewed, potholed and generally fucked up roads here.

Cheers Gordon (I'm a completely out of touch with society cunt) Brown.

I know there are some out there who will tell us to use our cars less and all that bollocks or to get a more efficient car but here's the catch: This car does have an efficient engine, for all it's myriad of other faults and luckily, the weekly shop aside, everywhere else I need to get to in a week is doable with the knackered old push bike I own.

That old thing will probably have to be held together with spent chewing gum and that tin foil from Kit-Kat bars for the next few months as the money I would have used to fix that has gone on the four wheeled grinning monster parked outside.

Needless to say I won't be getting drunk any time soon ... poverty really is a load of old shite if you can't at least get so legless you forget all about it for a few hours.

Did I say 18p at the start? I meant to say I'll take a crate of lager.